Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

He supposes now that the usual things happened to them: wives, jobs, house moves. They saw less of each other over time. They’d send a few scribbled lines in Christmas cards, but then a new address got missed and they drifted out of touch completely. It would have been easy for Michael to contact Phil through the television, but because Phil was in their living room so much he never really felt as if they’d lost touch.

Elsie sometimes worried that Michael was too self-contained, but Michael didn’t think that was true. She contained him; he had no need of anyone else.

He and Elsie walked a lot when they were courting. He had never been a great talker and she had never made him feel that he should be, but when they walked they talked. Nothing, they’d be the first to admit, of any great consequence, just the easy flow of observations, memories and thoughts possible only with each other. They always ended up in the park, under the tree they thought of as theirs, lying in the long grass, glimpsing the sky through the leaves and feeling the earth spin beneath them.

When she had the fourth miscarriage, he held her tightly all night, not letting her slip away. They cried and knew it was the last time. He promised her they’d be okay, just the two of them, told her they didn’t need anyone else. He knew it was harder for her, but for him it was true — he already had everything he wanted.

Even now, he’s never lonely. He stands at bus stops on busy streets and no one sees him. He sits in the lounge at night listening to the stairs creak. He spends his days in the unit crafting fine-precision tools that no one, as far as he can tell, wants. But he’s never lonely. He has no desire to attend the coffee mornings at the local community centre. He doesn’t want to talk to the limping young vicar who knocks at his door once a month. He doesn’t reply to the invitations that come from the school to their annual old-folks’ party.

He feels no connection to his hands and feet. He stares at them and wonders who they belong to. He watches with fascination as they put teabags in cups and shuffle to the post office. He isn’t lonely. He doesn’t want company. His Elsie has gone. His Elsie has gone.

Julia was off for the week. She’d said she was going away on holiday, but she told Frank in confidence that she just needed a week to sort her head out and work out what she wanted to do with her career and her life. Her disillusionment with the programme had reached breaking point recently. Sitting next to her on the little couch as the cameras rolled, Frank would feel something bubbling under the surface. Some days he thought it might dramatically break through and Julia might resign live on air with a blistering speech. He had an image of her as a bedraggled Peter Finch shouting at the camera: ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.’ But he had to concede that was fanciful, perhaps even wishful, thinking on his part. It wasn’t really Julia’s style.

In Julia’s absence Frank was presenting with Suzy for the week. She breezed in each day in her immaculate knitwear, hair like a helmet with tales of marvellous engagements at the golf club or the local chamber of commerce. She had no interest at all in getting to the bottom of the stories or in discussing with reporters exactly what it was they were trying to say. She was a presenter and her job as she saw it was to be a reassuring presence to viewers. She might pick up on a grammatical error on the autocue, but she would never question the internal logic of a report or the worthiness of it. Frank had to admit that for that week, after Julia’s recent thunderous moods, she was a delight. Whilst he and Julia held more or less similar points of view about the programme, about the standards they should aspire to and about what made a decent story, he found keeping up with her constant level of outrage to be exhausting.

On their last day working together Frank asked Suzy if she fancied getting a drink after the programme.

‘No thanks, Frank. I need to get off.’

‘Oh, well, that’s a shame. I just wanted to say that it’s been nice working together this week.’

Suzy smiled to herself and shook her head.

Frank picked up on something. ‘What?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘No, what is it?’

She looked at him. ‘You think I’m a bit of a joke, don’t you?’

Frank was taken aback. ‘No. Certainly not.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You could at least be honest about it.’ Frank didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m seen as “old school”, aren’t I?’

Frank shrugged. ‘Well, that’s not an insult.’

Suzy laughed. ‘I think it is, Frank. I think we both know that.’ She carried on bustling with her handbag and coat and then stopped to look again at Frank. ‘Can I ask you, Frank, how old you are?’

‘I’m forty-three.’

‘Well, I’m fifty. Not a huge difference, is there? And yet there you are on the main evening show and I’m tidily tucked away in the broom cupboard of the morning bulletins, where hopefully not too many people will notice me.’

‘Nobody tucked you away. You chose to move to the morning slots.’

‘Oh yes. I chose, but I was given a lot of helpful advice and guidance in making the decision when I was coming up to forty.’

‘By who?’

‘The powers that be. The same people who are giving me helpful advice now about perhaps retiring. You know, I’ve put in the years apparently, so why not take it easy and retire? Put my feet up? Take a well-earned break?’

‘Why do they want you to retire?’

‘Oh, come on, Frank. I’m fifty. I’m a woman. It’s fine for a man of that age to be presenting. It’s fine for a man of that age even to move to national television, to embark on a new phase of his career in front of a wider audience, to marry a woman half his age. But women? No, we’re supposed to fade away decorously sometime in our early forties. We may reappear in adverts for Saga holidays, or financial services aimed at the elderly, we may do the occasional voice-over on radio, but to be the face of the news? Who wants to see that?’

Frank realized that he was shocked not by what she was saying, but that she was saying it at all. He realized with some shame that he’d always assumed Suzy was somehow unaware of her own sidelining.

‘I’m sure Julia thinks that they replaced me with her because of her journalistic integrity, her rigour. Well, you might want to tell her one day that such things make no difference at all. There have been many female presenters before her on our programme and others — and they’ve run the gamut from brilliant journalists, to straightforward, professional presenters, but none of them makes it past fifty.’ She looked quite closely at Frank. ‘You see, Frank, your wrinkles lend you gravitas, mine make me unemployable.’ With that she left the newsroom.

A reporter named Clive had been standing nearby and had evidently been eavesdropping. He looked over at Frank now and pointing at his temple made the universal ‘nutter’ gesture. ‘Menopause — sends ’em mental.’

Frank looked away and felt complicit in the whole shitty nature of things.

He was still thinking about Suzy when the phone in his pocket started to ring and made him jump. He answered without looking who was calling.

‘Aye, aye.’

‘Hello, Cyril.’

‘Nice show this evening, sir, nicely done.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ Frank couldn’t remember a thing about it.

‘Just thought I’d see what’s coming up tomorrow. I can get my thinking cap on tonight and come back to you fresh in the morning with some crackers.’

‘Okay … give me a second, Cyril. I’ll just have a look … Hmmm, I don’t know, it’s all quite serious stuff to be honest — job losses, arson court case, a cowboy builder who’s swindled thousands from pensioners, a parish refusing to accept a female vicar …’